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tooner or rather , which last is properly the comparative of rath , ox rathe , signifying marly , not found in Shakespeare , but used ia one expression—•• the rathe primrose " ( JLycidat , 142)—by Milton , -who altogether ignores lief . Lief , liefer , and liefest , are all common in Spenser . Shakespeare has lief pretty frequently , but never liefer ; and liefest occurs only ia the Second Part of King Henry VI . , where , in iii . 1 , we have " My liefest liege . " In the same play , too ( i . 1 ) , we have " Mine alderliefest sovereign , " meaning dearest of all . " This beautiful word , " says Mr . Knight , ¦ " is a Saxon compound . Alder , of all , is thus frequently joined with an adjective of the superlative degree , —as alderfirst , alderlast . " But It cannot be meant that such combinations are frequent in the English of Shakespeare ' s day . They do occur , indeed , in a preceding stage of the language . Alder is a corrupted or at least modified form of the A . Saxon , genitive plural aller , or allre ; it is that strengthened by the interposition of
be noticed , prefers wherever it is possible the feminine to the masculine personification , as if he felt that the latter was always obscure from the risk of the his being taken for the neuter pronoun . Thus we hare { P . L . i . 723 ) " The ascending pile Stood fixed her stately height" ( ii . 4 ); " The gorgeous East with richest hand Showers on her kings" ( ii . 175 ) ; " What if all Her stores were opened , and this firmament Of hell should spout her cataracts of fire" ( ii . 271 ); " This desert soil Wants not her hidden , lustre" ( ii . 584 ); " Lethe , the river of oblivion , rolls Her watery labyrinth" ( ix . 1103 ); " The fig-tree . . . spreads Tier arms" { Com . 396 ); "Beauty ... had need . . . To save her blossoms and defend her fruit" ( Com 486 ) ; " The soul grows clotted . . . till she quite lose The divine property of her first being ; " and soon , continually and habitually , or upon system . His masculine personifications are comparatively rare , and are only ventured upon either where he does not require to use the pronoun , or where its gender cannot be mistaken .
tives ; it is only when this cannot be done , as in the above examples , that he reluctantly accepts the services of the little j > art ; en « monosyllable . Mr . Trench , notices the fact of the occurrence of its ia . Rowley's Poem * as decisive against their genuineness . He observes , also , that " Dryden , when , in one of his fault-finding moods with the great men of the preceding generation , he is taking Ben Jonson to task for general inaccuracy in his English diction , among other counts of his indictment , quotes this line of Catiline , ' Though heaven should speak with all bis wrath at once ; ' and proceeds , ' Heaven is ill syntax with , his . ' " This is a carious evidence of how completely the former humble condition and recent rise of the now fully established vocable had come to be generally forgotten in a single generation . The need of it , indeed , must have been much felt . If it was convenient to have the two fonn 927 e and It in the nominative , and Him and It in the other cases a similar distinction between the Masculine and the Neuter of the genitive must have been equally required for perspicuous expression . Even the personifying power of his was impaired by its being applied to both genders . Milton , consequently , it may
Milton himself , however , nowhere , I believe , uses his in a neuter sense . He felt too keenly the annoyance of such a sense of it always coming in the way to spoil or prevent any other use he might have made of it . And tie most curious tiling of all in the history of the word its is the extent to which , before its recognition as a word proper for serious composition , even the occasion for its employment was avoided or eluded . This is very remarkable in Shakespeare . The very conception which we express , by its probably does not occur once in his works for ten times that it is to be found in any modern writer . So that we may say the invention , or adoption , of this form has changed not only our English style , but even , our manner of thinking . The use of the word " lover , " on which Professor Craik comments ( p . 175 ) , is not yet extinct in the provinces . We one day received a letter from a young gentleman , expressive of his literary admiration , which was signed " Your lover ^ — Thomas —— . " Professor Craik says :-
—Thy lover . —As we might still say "One who loves thee . " It is nearly equivalent to friend , and -was formerly in common use in that sense . Thus in Psalm xxxviii . 11 , we have Ia the old version "My plovers and my neighbours did stand looking upon my trouble , " and also in the common version , " My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore . "—So afterwards in 375 Brutus begins his address to the people , " Romans , countrymen , and lovers . " Another change which has beea undergone by this and some other words is that they are now usually applied only to men , whereas formerly they ; were common to both sexes . This has happened , for instance , to jparamour and villain , as well as to lover . But villain is still a term of reproach for , a woman as well as for a man in some of the provincial dialects . And , although we no longer call a woman a lover , we still say of a man and woman that they are lovers ^ or a pair of lovers . I find the term lover distinctly applied to a woman in so late a work as Smollett ' s Cotmt Fathom , published in 1754 : — " These were alarming symptoms to a lover of her delicacy and pride . " ( Vol . I . ch . 10 . )
a supporting d ( a common expedient ) . Aller , with , the same signification , is still familiar in German compounds . —The ancient effect and construction of lief in English may be seen in the following examples from Chaucer : —" For him was lever han at his beddes head" ( C . T . Pro . 295 ) , that is , To him it was dearer to . have ( fewer a monosyllable , beddes a dissylable ); " Ne , though I say it , I n' am not lefe to gabbe " ( C . T . 3510 ) , that is , I am not given to prate ; "I hadde lever dien , " that is , I should hold it preferable to die . And Chaucer has also " Al be him loth oi lefe " ( C . T . 1859 ) , that is , Whether it be to him agreeable or disagreeable ; and " For lefe ne loth" ( C . T . 13062 ) , that ia , For love nor loathing . —We may remark the evidently intended connexion in sound ( between the lief and the live , or rather the attraction by which the one word haa been naturally produced or evoked by the other .
We must venture on a long extract , trusting its value will excuse the length : ~ DidhJe his lustre . — -There is no personification here . His was formerly neuter as well as masculine , ox the genitive of It as well as of He ; and his lustre , meaning the lustre of the eye , is the same form of expression that we have in the familiar texts : — " The fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind * whose seed is in itself" { Gen . i . 11 ) ; " Ii shall bruise tby head , and thou shalt bruise his heel" ( Gen . iii . 15 ) ; " If the salt have lost Jus savour' { Matt . v . 13 , and Luke xiv . 34 ) ; ¦ - "If the salt have lost his saltness" ( iffari ix . 50 ) ; and others . The word Its does not occur in the authorized translation of the Bible ; its place is always supplied either by iKs or by Thereof . So again , in the present play , in 523 , we have " That every nice offence should bear
his comment ; " and in Antony and Cleopatra , v . 1 , " The heart where mine his thoughts did kindle . " Its , however , is found in Shakespeare ; Mr . Trench , in his English , Past and Present , says that it occurs , he believes , three times . I should . inclined to think the instances would be found to be considerably more numerous . There is one in Measure for Measure , i . 2 , where Lucio's remark about coming to a composition with the King of Hungary draws the reply , " Heaven grant us ' its peace , but not the King of Hungary ' s . " The its here , it may be observed , has the emphasis . It is printed without the apostrophe both in the First and in the Second Folio . But the most remarkable of the Plays in regard to this particular is probably The Winter ' s Tale . Here , in i . 2 , we have so many as three instances in a single speech of Leontes : —
" How sometimes Nature-will betray it ' s folly ? It's tendernesse ? and make it selfe a Pastime To harder bosomes ? Looking on the Lynes Of my Boyes face , me thoughts I did requoyle Twentie three yeeres , and saw my selfe vribreech ' d , In my greene Velvet Coat ; my Dagger muzzel'd , Least it should bite it ' s Master ^ and so prove . ( As Ornaments oft do ' s ) too dangerous . " So stands the passage in the First Folio . IN " or does the new pronoun here appear to be a peculiarity of expression characteristic of the excited Sicilian king ; a little while after in the same scene -we have the same form from the mouth of Camillo : —¦ " Be plainer ¦ with me , let me know my Trespas By it ' s owne visage . " And again , in iii . 3 , we have Antigonus , when about to lay down the child ia Bohemia , observing that he believes it to be the wish of Apollo that " it should heere be laide
( Either for life , or death ) vpon the earth - ; Of it ' s right Father . " Nor is this all . There are two other passages of the same play , iu which the modern editors also give us its ; but in these the original text has it . The first is in ii . 3 , where Leontes , in directing Antigonus to carry away the " female bastard" to some foreign land , enjoins him that he there leave it " ( Without more mercy ) to it owne protection . " The other is in iii . 2 , where Hermione ' s -words stand in both the First and Second Folio , " The innocent milke in it most innocent mouth . " It is a mistake to assume , as the modern editors do , that it in these instances is a misprint for its : Mr . Guest { Phil . Pro . i . 280 ) has observed that in the dialects of the North-Western Counties formerly it -was sometimes used for its ; and that , accordl
ingy ) we have not only in Shakespeare ' s King John ii . 1 , " Goe to yt grandama , child .... and it grandaine will give yt a plumb , " but in Ben Jonson ' s Silent Woman , ii . 3 , " It knighthood and it friends . " So iu Lear , i . 4 , we have in a Bpeech of the Fool , " For you know , Nunckle , the Hedge-Sparrow fed the Cuckoo so long , that it ' s had it head bit off by it young" ( that is , that it has had its head , —not that it had its head , as the modern editors give the passage , after the Second Folio , in which it stands , " that it had its head bit off by it young" ) . So likewise , long before its was generally received , wo have it self commonly printed in two words , evidently under the impression that it was a possessive , of the same syntactical force with tlie pronouns in my self , your self , her self . And even now we do not write itsself . Formerly , too , according to Mr . Guest , they often said even " The King wife , " , for " The King ' s wife . " So ho holds that in such modem phrases , as " The idea of a thing being abstracted , " " of it being abstracted , " thing and it aro genitives , for thing ' s and its .
Wo have also either it or its in another paasago of Lear , where Albany , in iv . 2 , speaks of •« that nature which condemns its origin . " Tho passage ia not in the Folios ; but , if we may trust to Jennons , the First Quarto has ith , tho Second it , for tho if * of the modern text . Both thoao < i . uartos aro of 1 G 08 ; and there is also a third of tho same year , but tho reading iu that is not noted by tho commentators . Mr . Guest asserts that its was used generally by tho dramatists of tho age to which tho authorized version of the Biblo belongs , and also by many of their contemporaries . Mr . Trench doubts whether Milton has onco admitted it into Paradise Lost , " although , when that was composed , others frequently allowed it . " Tho common authorities giva us no help in such matters as this ; no notice is taken of tho -word Its eithor in Todd ' a Verbal Index to Milton , or iu Mrs . Clarke ' s elaborates Concordance to Shakespeare . But Milton does use Its occasionally , as , e . g . { P . L . i . 254 ) , The mind is its own place , and in itself ; " and { P . L . iv . 818 ) , ** No falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper , but returns Of force to its own likeness . " Generally , however , ho avoid * the word , and easily manages to do bo by perBonifying moat of hia eubatun-
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MONAUCHS RETIRED FROM BUSINESS . Monarchs Retired from Business . By Dr . Doran . 2 vols . Bentley . DK . DoKA . isf allows few historical doubts to interfere with the facile gaiety of his narrations . He is a talker and a teller of stories . Even when denials of old versions are taken into the account , it is merely in the way of gossip , scrutiny being dull , and dullness being the sin which , of all others , Dr . Doran is most anxious to avoid . His acuteness , however , enables him to see through many perplexities of improbability and contradiction , so that , without suffering from any peculiar tenderness of literary conscience , he ia less inaccurate than we might expect so rapid and discursive a compiler to be . Still , ^ he is essentially a random writer , whoso power of amusing may be admitted , but whose conclusions must be laid aside for further
analysis . He cannot spare from hia biographies the spice of the apocryphal or of the discreetly scandalous . Personal histories , in particular , lose too much of their colour , when exposed to criticism , to satisfy the strong turn that Dr . Doran hiis for the dramatic . His new book is , perhaps , more loosely constructed than the others which preceded it . It is also leas rich , in illustrations derived from , the study of uncommon books . It has no real Library scent ; it 13 modern in material as well as in style ; it haa fewer surprises of anecdote than " ¦ Table Traits , " less variety than " Habits and Men . " The subject is good—better , by far , than the treatment , though , the treatment is superior to that of most compilations . Dr . Doran is a writer of some resources ; ho is witty , quaint , and endowed with a memory for good sayings and anecdotes ; so that , even when he is merely working up a wellknown memoir , a ray of original humour serves to lighten the narration . The book , therefore , is interestinjir in a double sense—it abounds in
entertaining matter , and the manner is peculiarly that of Dr . Doran . He is free from the abject vice of our time , the adoration of royalty , and has no objection to exposo the dark side of a sacred reputation . Indeed , had it been liis tendency to flatter , he must have forsaken the idea of following kings and queens into the cloister , or have imitated that mercenary scribe whe attributed to Christina of Sweden the virtues of Cato . If majesty upon the throne has been habitually hateful , majesty oft" the throne has been usually ridiculous . Not many readers will care to look for illustrations ac far back as the reign of A- loni-Bezck , who cut off tho thumbs and toes ol seventy conquered princes , and afterwards , toelcss and thumbleBS himself , eat his food out of the dust . But it ia as well to remember that the terriblt
Dionysius was a capital barber , and that Zenobia , in her sublime retirement consoled herself by drinking . History has too long been converted intc the Walhalla of crowned heads . A Suetonius js needed , from time to time to show what leprous beggars have worn the purplo ; we mttst have om
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January 10 , 1857 . ] THE LEADEB , ^ v 41
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 10, 1857, page 41, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2175/page/17/
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